Foreign competition hurts U.S. plastic egg industry

JAMES BERNSTEINNewsday

Published Saturday, January 15, 2005

NEW YORK -- America's sole maker of plastic Easter eggs has cracked under the pressure of competition from Asia.

Bleyer Industries Inc. of Long Island last week filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, saying it has lost too much business to Chinese rivals. The company sold its plants in Hauppauge, N.Y., and Mount Union, Pa., keeping one in Peoria, Ill., and is seeking a partner to survive. A Chapter 11 filing allows a company to put off paying its debts while it tries to come up with a recovery plan.

"It's been very stressful to all of us after all these years," Nicholas Poulis, Bleyer's president, said Thursday.

Poulis and his brother, Gus, Bleyer's chief executive, have been overseeing plastic Easter egg manufacturing since 1991, when they acquired a bankrupt company, Peoria Plastics, in Peoria, Ill.

About 250 million of the colorful plastic toys were made every year at the Peoria plant, and were sold by some of the United States' largest retailers -- Wal-Mart, Target, and Toys R Us.

But, Nicholas Poulis said, "In the past five to seven years, there's been a lot of competition," mostly from China.

Nicholas Poulis said that the company spent millions to upgrade and automate its molding and packaging equipment at the Peoria plant. But Gus Poulis said that exceptionally low labor costs in China -- as low as 20 cents to 30 cents an hour, compared to about $9 an hour plus fringe benefits in the United States -- proved too formidable.

As debts mounted, Bleyer earlier this month sold its plant in Hauppauge, which employed about 40 people in a printing-converting process. The Poulis' declined to name the company that bought the plant, but said most jobs were retained.

Bleyer sold its Pennsylvania facility in May. About 120 people worked there, mostly making shredded Easter grass, basket overwraps and Christmas gift wrap.

All those jobs were retained, the Poulis' said.

But the Peoria facility was downsized. Of the approximately 130 people who worked there, only a "skeleton staff" remain, the Poulis' said. Bleyer also has now has about 8 or 10 people at its headquarters, down from about 35.